The Government Is Coming After Your BBQ?

The Federal government appears to be putting a bull’s-eye on your outdoor grill — and some politicians in Michigan wants you to know about it.

It is true. I have read about this recently. The Obama Administration wants to reduce your pollution from your grills.

That will help global warming, won’t it?

The point being, even if you believe that man-made global warming is occurring, do you believe if just Americans were to reduce carbon emissions from our grills that it would have an effect on the world? This would have to be implemented across the planet to have any minimal effect.

Also, I just read that a study from the UK found that climate experts warn the amount of light and warmth released by the sun is nose-diving to levels "not seen for centuries."

Now, what, in a couple of years they will ask us to increase our CO2 outputs?

According to an article I read in the Michigan Capitol Confidential, Sen. Phil Pavlov, R-St. Clair, and Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba, are joint sponsors of a resolution in Michigan’s Senate intended to inform Michiganders of this issue.

According to the article, the federal EPA has commissioned a study intended "To perform research and develop preventative technology that will reduce fine particulate emissions (PM2.5) from residential barbecues. This technology is intended to reduce air pollution as well as health hazards in Southern California, with potential for global application."

Their resolution says, in part:

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), our nation's environmental regulatory agency, has funded a University of California-Riverside student project to develop preventive technology to reduce emissions from residential barbecues. By funding this project, the EPA is apparently intent on finding a solution to a problem that does not exist and demonstrating an unnecessary interest and concern over the impact of backyard barbecues on public health; and based on the EPA's past practices, today's study, no matter how small, is a concern to Michiganders and Americans, as it is inevitably the first step toward tomorrow's regulation of this American pastime.

To fulfill its mission to protect human health and the environment, the EPA's primary tool has been, and continues to be, regulatory mandates that time and again ignore the financial, economic, and social burdens to the state and the country. The regulation of barbecues would be the latest, egregious example of overreach by the EPA; and funding such a study is a poor use of taxpayer dollars. In the face of record national debts, annual budget deficits, and other profound problems the country is facing, surely the federal government can better use our resources than on a study of grills and backyard barbecues.

Senator Casperson is quoted in the articled stating “This is not the biggest issue we have here in Michigan, and particularly in Northern Michigan, regarding the EPA; but it is especially symbolic of what keeps happening when you have an agenda-driven agency like the present day EPA that wants to regulate everything.”